5

“Who is that?”

Curtis stared through his binoculars, held in his left hand with the mike in his right, but the diver had disappeared the instant he hit the water. Into the mike, with impatient sincerity, Curtis said, “Diedrich, don’t be a fool. Get that man back.”

The voice over the radio sounded scared, as well it should: “I can’t. I didn’t— It wasn’t my order.”

Was the diver moving toward the island? Or would he stay by the ship, waiting to be told what to do next? Curtis said, “If that idiot gets too close to the island, he’s dead. I’m telling you, Diedrich, and it’s true. We’re not talking one explosion here, we’re talking half a dozen in a rolling pattern, each with its own shock wave. If that man’s going toward the island, you’ve killed one of your own people. And I will pursue you in the Australian courts.”

“Then stop it!”

“I can’t, you bloody fool! You’ve been told and told. It’s too late.”

The silence from Diedrich sounded shocked, but there was nothing to be done about it, not now. Handing the mike to Captain Zhang, Curtis said, “There’s nothing more to say to them.” Turning away, carrying the binoculars, he stepped out onto the wing, the small open area to the right of the bridge. He leaned on the rail there and, through the glasses, he looked toward Kanowit, empty and silent.

Diedrich. It was him again, Jerry Diedrich. The other environmental groups, and even other arms of Planetwatch, spent most of their time on the government polluters, the bomb-testers and radioactive-waste dumpers. Only Diedrich was always there, every single time, when the Curtis Construction Company was doing anything that impinged even slightly on environmental concerns.

Curtis Construction was large, not as large as it used to be, but still big enough to be a player in most of the major construction work around the globe, the dams, the widening of rivers, deepening of ports, construction of harbors. And every time, sooner or later, Diedrich would appear, a plague, a pest.

Would he show up later, in Hong Kong, when it really mattered? Was there no way to stop him?

Holding the binoculars, Curtis scanned the water between the island and the environmentalists’ ship, but could see nothing. The diver would stay underwater, to move faster, but couldn’t be very deep, not amidst all that coral. If he was out there now, near the island, and if the shock waves didn’t kill him, then being battered repeatedly against razor-edge outcroppings of coral surely would.

He hadn’t meant anyone to die, not this time. Later, when the real thing happened, a whole lot of people would die, but they would deserve it. These environmentalists were merely well-meaning ignoramuses, minor irritations; all except Diedrich. There was no need, as the French had once done, to kill them.

But if the diver did die, could that be used to hamper Diedrich, tie him up, keep him away when it was important for Curtis to be unobserved? There were recordings of the ship-to-ship conversation, there would be proof of the repeated warnings, and of Diedrich’s refusal to heed them. When he got back to Sydney, Curtis would turn it all over to the lawyers, let them harry Diedrich for a while, see how he enjoyed it,

Curtis scanned the ocean through the binoculars, seeing nothing, only the wavelets, the constant shifting movement of the sea. And then the ocean trembled, it flattened into hobnails, and the binoculars shuddered, punching painfully against Curtis’s face.